Revy
5th June 2014, 20:39
http://realestate.msn.com/blogs/post--which-billionaire-could-buy-your-entire-city
http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/9e749888e4f940979c6b9458e655777b.jpg
Just how rich is Bill Gates? According to Forbes, he's the world's richest person and is worth $77.5 billion.
But that kind of wealth is hard to wrap your head around, so let's put it another way: Gates could buy every single home in the entire city of Boston. That's 114,717 single-family homes, condos and townhouses, at a total purchase price of $76.6 billion.
Given that the average American struggles to afford a home, we wanted to illustrate just how many homes the wealthiest among us could buy. Here's a table of some of the billionaires on the Forbes' 400 Wealthiest (http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/) list, each paired with a city that billionaire could hypothetically buy. For the sake of this illustration, we assumed that wealthy families, such as the Waltons of Wal-Mart and the Koch brothers, would pool their money if they were going to purchase an entire city (post continues below chart):http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/2594fd6a551c423cb764b135cd3f2dd8.png
Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson puts this wealth in perspective:
"In this fictional real estate investment, the 30 billionaires on our list, with a combined fortune of $582 billion, could afford to own a staggering 6 percent of the total U.S. home equity."
While Bill Gates is the richest single person, several of the Waltons are among the superrich. The family could choose from any of a number of large cities in which to buy every home, including these 10:http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/658b31501ff3407ea75afeda88660dfa.png
http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/9e749888e4f940979c6b9458e655777b.jpg
Just how rich is Bill Gates? According to Forbes, he's the world's richest person and is worth $77.5 billion.
But that kind of wealth is hard to wrap your head around, so let's put it another way: Gates could buy every single home in the entire city of Boston. That's 114,717 single-family homes, condos and townhouses, at a total purchase price of $76.6 billion.
Given that the average American struggles to afford a home, we wanted to illustrate just how many homes the wealthiest among us could buy. Here's a table of some of the billionaires on the Forbes' 400 Wealthiest (http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/) list, each paired with a city that billionaire could hypothetically buy. For the sake of this illustration, we assumed that wealthy families, such as the Waltons of Wal-Mart and the Koch brothers, would pool their money if they were going to purchase an entire city (post continues below chart):http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/2594fd6a551c423cb764b135cd3f2dd8.png
Redfin Chief Economist Nela Richardson puts this wealth in perspective:
"In this fictional real estate investment, the 30 billionaires on our list, with a combined fortune of $582 billion, could afford to own a staggering 6 percent of the total U.S. home equity."
While Bill Gates is the richest single person, several of the Waltons are among the superrich. The family could choose from any of a number of large cities in which to buy every home, including these 10:http://media-social.s-msn.com/images/blogs/658b31501ff3407ea75afeda88660dfa.png